Alumni: Duane Hatch, Belmont University

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Duane Hatch (m) and two students; Ambrose Rice (l) and Ryan Agh (r) worked at the Lab this summer.

Through the end of last month, Duane Hatch and two of his students spent 10 weeks at the Lab. While there, Hatch continued his research on protein structure development and his students got to spend time in a working laboratory.

“While 10 weeks isn’t a lot of time,” said Hatch, “it does give the students an opportunity to work with new tools and understand what it takes to work in this type of environment. Ryan, one of the students, turned down two other opportunities to be able to spend time in Los Alamos.”

Hatch worked at the Lab for more than two and a half years starting back in May of 2002 as a Graduate Research Assistant while he worked on his Master’s degree from Tennessee Tech University.

“I was encouraged to get a PhD and did get one in Synthetic Organic Chemistry in 2009 from the University of Cincinnati,” Hatch said.

Not only do the Belmont undergraduates get to learn through the hands-on work, Hatch takes the results obtained at the Lab back to use for his ongoing research. “Because of the time spent at LANL and the collaborations I’ve maintained, I’m able to expand the scope of my research more so than would be traditionally possible at a primarily undergraduate university,” Hatch said.

Hatch hopes to return in coming summers and would like to be able to bring even more of his students with him. This year, they were here as part of the DOE Visiting Faculty Program with the assistance of Scott Robbins, who is part of the National Security Education Center at the Lab.

“Bringing two students here is great but I’d be twice as happy if I could bring four,” he said.

When not involved in chemistry pursuits, he likes to race sailboats.

Hatch would like to acknowledge the longtime support of Pete Silks and Ricardo Marti-Arbona, both with Bioenergy and Biome Sciences.